"Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art" opens next week at Estrella Mountain Community College (EMCC), a Maricopa Community College. The exhibition traces the histories of coiled basketry in Africa and America and explores the evolution of an ancient art. Featuring baskets from the low country of South Carolina and Georgia, as well as from diverse regions of Africa, the exhibition traces the story of coiled basketry from the domestication of rice in Africa, through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Carolina rice plantation, and then into the present day. The display is in honor of Black History Month and will be available for viewing February 9 - February 23, 2009 in the college's Plaza Gallery. The college is located at 3000 N. Dysart Road in Avondale.
Visitors to the display will experience diverse artifacts including baskets, basket-making tools, and historic rice cultivation artifacts. "Grass Roots" highlights the remarkable beauty of coiled basketry and shows how the market basket can be viewed simultaneously as a work of art, object of use, and container of memory. In this exhibition, the humble but beautifully crafted coiled basket, made in Africa and the southern United States, becomes a prism in which audiences will learn about creativity and artistry characteristic of Africans in America from the 17th century to the present.
The exhibition was brought to campus as part of the college's visual exhibition program which features nationally-recognized art shows throughout the year. This exhibition is toured by Mid-America Arts Alliance through NEH on the Road, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. "Grass Roots" was organized by the Museum for African Art in New York City. Mid-America Arts Alliance was founded in 1972 and is the oldest regional non-profit arts organization in the U.S. For more information, visit www.nehontheroad.org or www.maaa.org.